Friday, February 20, 2015

David Brooks get paid a lot, one imagines, to represent the thoughtful conservative's muse. Instead, he more often than not unleashes the puzzled conservative's knucklehead. It's always wrapped in something that vaguely resembles moderate analysis -- while attacking Barack Obama's liberal failings.

That Barack Obama is neither a liberal nor a failure sometimes gets in Brooks' way. But enough. Here's what provokes actual thoughtful people this week. As background, remember that Fox News and other brainiac energies in the right-wingosphere are all atwitter because our president refuses to legitimize ISIS by calling them Islamist, maintaining -- reasonably, I claim -- that they don't deserve religious cover for their malevolent barbarism. So, then, Brooks avers:

The struggle against Islamic extremism has been crippled by a failure of
historical awareness and cultural understanding. From the very
beginning, we have treated the problem of terrorism through the prism of
our own assumptions and our own values. We have solipsistically assumed
that people turn to extremism because they can’t get what we want, and
fail to realize that they don’t want what we want, but want something
they think is higher.

Oh, yeah, Brooks, our mistake is that we think Muslims just want a bag of Fritos, a Pepsi, and a seat at an X-Men screening. Thanks for explaining the difference between what we want and they want, with them wanting something "they think is higher." Please continue:

At
the summit meeting, President Obama gave the conventional materialistic
explanation for what turns people into terrorists. Terrorism spreads,
he argued, where people lack economic opportunity and good schools. The
way to fight terror, he concluded, is with better job-training programs,
more shared wealth, more open political regimes, and a general message
of tolerance and pluralism.

In
short, the president took his secular domestic agenda and projected it
as a way to prevent young men from joining ISIS and chopping off heads.

But
people don’t join ISIS, or the Islamic State, because they want better
jobs with more benefits. ISIS is one of a long line of
anti-Enlightenment movements, led by people who have contempt for the
sort of materialistic, bourgeois goals that dominate our politics. These
people don’t care if their earthly standard of living improves by a few
percent a year. They’re disgusted by the pleasures we value, the
pluralism we prize and the emphasis on happiness in this world, which we
take as public life’s ultimate end.

They’re
not doing it because they are sexually repressed. They are doing it
because they think it will ennoble their souls and purify creation.

There it is, the requisite attack on Barack Obama. Trouble is, Obama's right, and Brooks succeeds in elevating the motives of ISIS. But I won't explain just how far off Brooks is. I'll let his commenters explain for us:

I've long pondered what is needed to cure religious extremism. So it
would be a relief to have the answers from Professor Brooks, except that
he's not got the answers.

He is right about one thing:
"Extremism isn’t mostly about Islam. It is about a yearning for
righteousness rendered malevolent by apocalyptic theology". Which
explains America's very own brand of religious extremism that inflicts
terror on non-believers in the form of highly effective lobbying against
abortion, gay marriage, secular schooling, income inequality,
employer-paid contraception, and a host of other issues based on
malevolent theology. Separation of church and state, my tuchus.

He's
also right in saying "These people don’t care if their earthly standard
of living improves by a few percent a year". Witnessed by the
alarmingly broad swath of Americans who regularly vote against their
well-being and economic interests.

Now, there's no shortage of
nationalism in these people's America, so it would seem that nationalism
alone does not cure religious extremism. And let's not forget that
nationalism spawns empires and war, so, thanks but no thanks, Mr.
Brooks.

American presidents focus on the economic and political
level not because it's what they're comfortable talking about, but
because those are elements they can actually influence. How a president
can counter malevolent theology - in the middle east let alone at home -
escapes me, and it would seem escapes Mr. Brooks as well.

Spot on. Next please:

It is a disturbing thought that one can substitute a few choice words or
phrases in Mr. Brook's column and the situation that would be described
is the pompous, self-righteous religious extremism so prevalent in our
American society today. Anti-abortion, anti-climate change,
anti-science, anti-evolution, anti-gay marriage, anti-secular schooling,
festering gun ownership and the right to shoot anyone dead because of
fear generated by different skin color, income inequality,
corporation''s religious beliefs, and a host of other issues, all
justified by religiosity, constitute our own special brand of terrorism.

These are the two most recommended comments by David Brooks' own readers. They hit the nail on the head and clearly decipher what's wrong with both Brooks' thesis-du-jour and the conservative view-du-monde.

His readers see what he cannot, or will not. And how ironic that his caterwauling articulates the religious right's fundamental flaws. Let's end with a comment that squares the circle:

Perverted spiritual ardor applies to both sides. George W. Bush
consulted his God before blundering us into a war that has triggered
many unintended consequences. Muslim clerics are in no hurry to fix the
theology that permeates their society and motivates its madness. It's
working just fine in their view.

Obama's secular response many
not work, but the apocalyptic spiritual vision of conservatives seems
just as perverted. If the goal is to avoid a theological battle that
will bring on the End Times, secular seems the only sane way to go.
Instead, we have a frightening line-up of the usual Republican suspects
waiting in the wings, thumping their bibles, denying science and
fomenting their own apocalyptic visions.

Rapacious Middle Eastern
leadership has left millions of young men disenfranchised, displaced
and unemployed. American military adventurism has made us targets for
theologically-fueled anger. There is no quick fix to a problem that we
have exacerbated for decades, but there will certainly be a protracted
conflict that presidential speeches have no power to stop.

About the American Human

The American Human is written by Calvin Ross, a retired teacher who at various points in life has been a musician, woodworker, restaurateur, narrator, English teacher in Japan, novelist, technology journalist, and private tutor to Japanese children here in the U.S.

Happily residing in the wine country of Sonoma County north of San Francisco, Calvin has lived in the Philippines, the Netherlands, and the aforementioned Japan, as well as in Chicago, Colorado, Georgia, and many different towns in California, including, of all places, the Mojave Desert.

Calvin, you may note quickly, is a liberal progressive who doesn't think being called a socialist is all that bad, especially since he sort of would like living in Denmark if it weren't so cold. He blogs because he can.